Cuba Rejects Washington’s Designation of State Terrorism

Cuba has firmly rejected Washington’s repeated and shameful designation of Cuba as a ‘state sponsor of international terrorism.’

A statement released by the Cuban Foreign Ministry says that, once again, the shameful decision was taken in deliberate disregard of truth and ignoring the large consensus and demand by numerous sectors of U.S. society and the international community for the end of such injustice.

The only objective of this discredited practice against Cuba is trying to justify the upholding of the blockade, a failed policy condemned by the whole world. It also aims at pleasing a decreasing and small group of anti-Cuba people, who try to underpin a policy that has no support and that not even represents the national interests of the United States, or the majority of the US population, or the Cuban migrants living in that country, the statements points out.

The Cuban ministry says that the United States government insists in this arbitrary and unilateral designation despite the total collapse of ridiculous accusations and weak arguments which Washington has traditionally used over the past years as pretexts with this aim, such as the presence in Cuba of fugitives of U.S. justice, none of whom have been accused of terrorism.

The United States also alleges that Cuba protects ETA Basque militants, in full disregard of the fact that such aspect was related to a request by the governments involved in that issue. They also say that Colombian guerrilla rebels are living in Cuba, which is an absurd accusation because Cuba has been a warrantor country of the Colombian peace process since 2011.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry notes that the island’s territory has never been used and will never be used to harbor terrorists of any origin, or to organize, finance or perpetrate terrorist acts against any country of the world, including the United States.

The Cuban government rejects and unmistakably condemns all acts of terrorism in any place, under any circumstances and whatever motivations may be alleged, stressed the Ministry.

On the contrary, the government of the United States resorts to state terrorism as a weapon against the countries that defy US interests, and this way they kill the civil population. They have used drones to carry out extra-judicial executions of alleged terrorists, including US citizens, as a result of these actions hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed, the Cuban Foreign Ministry points out.

The United States has historically harbored terrorists and confessed assassins of Cuban origin and they still protect Luis Posada Carriles, who masterminded the first terrorist attack against a civil airliner in the Western Hemisphere, which caused the explosion in mid air of a Cubana  plane off the coasts of Barbados on October 6, 1976. The action resulted in the deaths of all 73 people on board, including the Cuban juvenile fencing team.

Posada Carriles is freely living in Miami, while Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González remain unfairly incarcerated in U.S. jails for having fought terrorism in the United States, since they were accused of crimes they never committed, the statement stressed.

For decades now, Cuba has suffered the consequences of terrorist acts organized, financed and launched from US territory, which have resulted in 3,478 people killed and 2,099 wounded. The Cuban government does not recognize the U.S. government to have the slightest moral authority to judge Cuba.

Since 2002, the Cuban government has proposed the U.S. administration to adopt a bilateral accord to fight terrorism; the proposal was reiterated in 2012 with no response from Washington.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry strongly rejects the use of a sensitive issue, such as international terrorism with political aims and demands the end of such shameful designation, which offends the Cuban people, since its only objective is trying to justify at any cost the anachronistic and cruel blockade against Cuba, while such behavior discredits the government of the United States.